SKEMA Digital Marketing in Tourism and Events: Wikivoyage: A new threat for the travel industry?

The Wikimedia foundation (WMF), the non-profit parent organization of Wikipedia officially launched on January 15, 2013 their newest project, an online travel guide called “Wikivoyage”. The article written by CNN travel staff and published on their website (January 16^th, 2013) introduces this new travel site and highlights the potential impact that it could have on the travel industry.

Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia foundation claimed that the project was initiated on the basis of a very simple observation: “ There is a huge global demand for travel information, but very few sources are both comprehensive and non-commercial. That’s about to change”. They aim to establish the site as the ultimate travel guide 2.0: it means complete, free, up-to-date, reliable and collaborative.

What is it exactly?

This is a free online travel guide that just like Wikipedia is built collaboratively by a group of 200 volunteers, written and edited by travellers for travellers. The site already houses 50 000 articles on destinations around the world and is available in nine languages. All its content is published under a creative common licence that allows anyone to read, copy, print, save, modify, distribute, sell and update it. Much of the content has been migrated over from Wikitravel site. This one was sold to Internet Brands and a number of users and editors left the site because the new owner introduced advertising on the service.

A typical Wikiwoyage page provides you practical information and the traditional section of a travel guide as the places of interest, history, shopping, accommodation, climate and so on. It has been designed to be read online or on a smartphone and can be printed out to take with you on your travels. The interesting aspect is that you can create your own travel guide by selecting pages from the site with the free book “Creator” option.

As an example the journalist explains « if you’re heading to Thailand and visiting only Chiang Mai, Bangkok and Phuket, rather than buy a whole book on the country you can select the pages highlighting only the destination you want, as well as the overall information on Thailand, like currency and transportation options, Then download it and send it to whatever device you want to access it from. »

Impact on the travel industry

The project has already attracted attention, especially in the travel sector. Indeed for some it is a major new tool that is susceptible to revolutionize the e-tourism sector as well as Wikipedia revolutionized the encyclopedia and digital research word. For others it represents only a new player, certainly disturbing but who comes a little later into the travel industry. Are online travel guides likely to experience direct competition from it? Finally how might destination and travel business use the new site as additional social media platform for marketing?

According to Jani Patokallio (travel industry news website Skift) Wikiwoyage and the others online travel guides such as TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet and so on do not play the same game. Indeed, there is no commercial and transactional component as we can found on others sites. The role of this free resource is more located upstream in the decision making process of the traveller.

Moreover some professionals recommend to the tourism stakeholders especially for the DMO to invest in the site Wikiwoyage because it could be a useful tool to update information. Besides its content could quickly appears on multiple travel sites and mobile applications.

Wikivoyage will have some important challenges to tackle as the problem of objectivity and subjectivity of the articles, which appeared also with his sister Wikipedia. Another issue will be the regulation by keeping away the restaurateurs, the hotel managers and so on that would like to advertise their business. Wikivoyage refuses to become the yellow pages.

This article is interesting to see how this new form of travel guide could disrupt the sector. Social media invaded the tourist web. These 2.0 tools can take many different forms: collaborative blog, wiki, social networks, websites for sharing photos or videos, and more. They have a huge impact on tourism. Social media has changed the consumer behaviour in terms of preparation and purchase of their trip. We passed through a logic of sharing experiences with others travellers, through site assessments, reviews and comments on social networks.

It is a bit early to predict the success or failure of the project. However if this new tool of sharing information manages to federate the online community of passionate by travel and tourism, the contributors will be numerous and the content will be richer. The site could compete on a more or less long term with publishers of guidebooks and online travel sites.